The Meaning of Friendship
by ArcAngel-liberty4all
Summary: What would Ginny have been like if she had been sorted into Slytherin? In the lonely summer before her 4th year, she finds a true friend in an unexpected place.


Summery: What would Ginny have been like if she had been sorted into Slytherin? In the lonely summer before her 4th year, she finds a true friend in an unexpected place.

Chapter One: the seeds of trust were sown

Sirius mood was dark, darker than one might expect given that he suddenly had company, an entire family of red headed teenagers. Harry wasn't here though, he was locked up in Privet Drive, and to top it all off Dumbledore had banned him from telling Harry anything.

He heard someone crying, it was muffled, and it was clear they were trying to be quiet, but his enhanced canine hearing had picked it up. He opened the door, and realised it was the room Ginny, and soon Hermione also had been allocated. Ginny was sat on the bed, gazing out into the rainy July day. It was summer rain, warm and wet and heavy, but the girl didn't seem to be paying any attention to the weather.

"Ginny" Sirius tried. He was unsure how to approach this girl, he knew Ron thought she was a traitor, and he knew that she was the only Slytherin Weasley in living memory, but then again, Ron hadn't believed Harry last year during the Triwizard Tournament fiasco.

Ginny stayed for a moment; still, although she stopped sobbing, she barely seemed to be aware he was there.

"My family hates me." Sirius stopped surprised. Harry had mentioned, once or twice that he admired the Weasley family for their amazing, unconditional love for each other, and here was Ginny saying they hated her.

But Sirius didn't contradict her; his family had hated him for being sorted into Gryffindor. He sat beside her on the edge of the bed and looked down at her. She was a pretty girl for her age, with appealing brown eyes, and a slender form, which showed her to be a quidditch player. The Quidditch player in fact, that Draco Malfoy had been booted to chaser for because she was so talented. Of course, Malfoy hadn't been able to be removed entirely, he paid for the brooms after all.

Harry had told him about that as well, he'd told him how funny it was to see Malfoy afterwards, even though he actually made a better chaser, up until their first match, and he'd had to really fight and work hard to get the snitch instead of Ginny, she was that good.

Thinking about it, Harry had told him quite a lot of things involving this young witch, and here she was crying her eyes out, believing her family hated her.

"Why do you think your family hates you?" His tone wasn't condescending, or disbelieving or even surprised, it was understanding. Ginny looked up, surprised before dismissing his concern.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"I severely doubt that Harry's esteemed Godfather would know what it was like to face rejection from his closest family at age eleven." Sirius was surprised at this, clearly no one had told her.

"Have you wondered why the Headquarters of a light organisation was in a house that clearly belongs to dark wizards?"

"I assumed it might be to throw Voldemort or the Ministry off our scent." She said, matter-of-factly. Sirius threw his head back and gave a bark like laugh, not only amused at such a well reasoned and intuitive assumption, but also impressed as hell that she said Voldemort, not you-know-who or he-who-must-not-be-named, like the rest of the Weasleys, except Bill. But then again, Bill was the epitome of cool.

"Why are you laughing?" she demanded, suddenly seeming so much more like a child than he had ever considered her.

"I'm just impressed."

"Because I got it right?"

"No! You didn't guess right, although it was a good guess. I was impressed because you said Voldemort's name, your parents don't and you're brothers don't."

Ginny regarded him for a long moment: "It doesn't hold nearly as much menace for me as 'Tom' does." Then blushed, as if she'd said something very personal, which he supposed, she had.

"What happened to you was nothing to be ashamed of, it could have happened to anyone."

"But it didn't, it happened to me." Ginny's tone was final, as if that was the end of the matter. "But anyway," She shook her long hair out a little and looked squarely at him. "You didn't tell me why the headquarters of a light order is in such a dark house."

"This was my parents house, it's mine now." Ginny's eyes widened in shock. Sirius continued quickly, before she could start asking any awkward questions. "The Blacks are an old pureblood family, and blood purists. More racist than the Malfoys. I was, the elder son and heir to the title of Lord, and the property of the family. I have it now, my parents and brother are dead, and in the end, I was never officially disowned.

"Anyway when I was sorted into Gryffindor, my parents sent me howler the next morning. They truly hated me, and changed their will so everything went to Regulus. Then at the end of the war, my mother never changed the will back, and when she died everything went to me, and gathered interest for ten years, until I accessed it a few months back.

"So really, I might understand better than you think." Sirius finished. A small sad smile appeared on the young girl's face. "I was lucky, I found some truly amazing friends at Hogwarts and from the sound of it you have too. And in my experience, I find it's always better to talk about these things. Remus thought so too, and he had to ply me with alcohol for a few hours before I started talking about Az- about prison." The smile grew wider and Sirius realised.

"Not that I'm going to give you alcohol that is. Molly would never forgive me." Ginny laughed a little at that, and then leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders, a fatherly gesture, though he would never tell her, he'd done that for Harry more than a few times last year. He'd used the floo to sneak into the common room late at night and spoken with his Godson for hours. Always with Harry's invisibility cloak and a low level proximity ward to prevent him being caught of course, but he wasn't about to tell Ginny that.

"I think I was sorted into Slytherin by mistake." Ginny started, quietly. This was her deepest secret, and it had to stay secret, but she felt she could trust Sirius.

"How'd you work that one out?"

"Well, I've always been ambitious. That's one Slytherin trait I've always had. I've always wanted to be noticed for more than just being the first Weasley girl in generations. I wanted to be a powerful woman and a powerful witch. But I was writing in the diary at the time, and I think _his_ complete Slytherinness came through in me. His ambition, his cunning, his ruthlessness."

"I can see why you might think it's a mistake, but think of it this way, if you had been in Gryffindor, would you have been as strong a witch and a student, or would you have taken the Fred and George or Ron approach to school? And besides you have friends don't you?" Sirius thought for one terrible moment that he'd made an awful faux pas, and the girl might not have friends.

"I suppose I would have taken the lazy approach, because I'd like to think I'm quite clever. And I do have friends" Ginny said, realising some of the truth in Sirius' words.

"The sorting hat usually makes the right choice, even though it might not realise it at the time." Sirius looked at Ginny's still forlorn face. "Tell me about your friends."

"Well there's Astoria, Tori. She's lovely, probably the nicest person I've ever met, and she's so beautiful. If she wasn't such an amazing person I'd probably take an ego hit every time she approached. She came up to me about a month into first year. She had been hanging around with her sister Daphne's friends, but Daphne had told her to go away, so one day in the common room, just after class, she kind of ran up to me, and gave me a massive hug and announced that I was her new best friend.

"I didn't get any homework done that night, we just sat and talked for hours, Astoria had a house elf bring us some food. I'd never even seen a house elf until then. I found out that her family had always been neutral, in any civil war, because that suited them. I told her all about my family, and how my brothers and I used to be so close, and she told me about herself and her sister, and how they used to be the closest friends, but they'd drifted apart now they both went to Hogwarts. We had more common interests than you'd expect. I'd always wanted to learn to sing, and she could so she taught me. We helped each other with our homework, and looked up new and exciting spells and potions.

"With her help I became invisible in the Slytherin common room, the teasing for being a Weasley stopped and I became accepted. I guess the fact that despite being blood traitors, Weasley blood is about as pure as you can possibly get helps more than a little.

"I never told her about the diary. I always regretted that, but she was amazing, she wasn't mad at me when Professor Snape took me back to the common room before the end of year feast. She just wrapped her arms around me and started crying and said 'I thought I'd lost you, please don't do that again I couldn't take it.'

"That was the cue really for me to start crying again, the other people in my year, even Dolohov all came and welcomed me back. Daphne and her friends, who we'd occasionally hung around with all came up and hugged me, and said that they were glad to have me back. I realised that, through being almost invisible I'd been accepted, and people cared.

"I knew that some of them were blood purists, but I also knew that most of them weren't, although they didn't tend to know anything about the muggle world either.

"I met Luna Lovegood and Kate Ryans in Herbology. We shared a class, and for one activity, Professor Sprout said we had to work in groups of 4 or 5 of mixed houses. Tori and I went with them and we kind of became friends that way. I knew Luna for a little while before Hogwarts, but she'd changed so much, become so dreamy. I think the death of her mother caused her to develop mage sight, because she keeps talking about creatures no one but her can see. Kate is lovely, she's very pretty, she dances and sings and acts and she wants to be on the stage when she's older, or she did. She's changed her mind now and wants to be a lawyer because she'll get more money, and it's more stable.

"Kate introduced, well all of us really to dancing and acting. We used to have these practice sessions on Saturday mornings, going through bits of plays, Shakespeare and stuff, it was really fun. Then one day, completely unexpectedly, Dumbledore started clapping from a corner of the room, none of use had noticed him coming in. It was quite funny really because we were doing the witch scene at the start of Macbeth, and we were parodying muggle ideas of witches, doing these huge grotesque characters.

"Dumbledore suggested we start a theatre club, and we did. I suppose it was really weird, three first years starting a club, but a Ravenclaw fifth year whose mum's on the muggle television came in and helped run it. Mostly we just play drama games for half an hour, but we put on shows too, twice a year. None of my brothers have ever come to see it, we don't tend to have that big an audience anyway.

"I suppose I mostly hang around with Tori, Kate and Luna. I've decided what I want to be as well, either an actress, or a Quidditch player."

Sirius smiled, she wasn't crying at all, and she was happier and more animated than he'd ever seen her when she was talking about the good things at Hogwarts.

"So you play Quidditch?"

"Yeah, I'm a seeker like Harry. I'm nearly as good as him as well, I don't have the natural talent, but I've been stealing my brothers brooms and practising on them since I was six."

"Harry says you're as good as he is and ten times better than Malfoy." Sirius pointed out, and struggled not to burst out laughing at the shocked look on her face.

"He's probably just being nice, I hang around with him sometimes, and Hermione, we study together in the library and Tori, but only when Ron's not around." Sirius raised his eyebrows, he'd gathered that Harry spoke to Ginny occasionally, but he didn't know that they studied together, in fact, he'd been under the illusion that Harry avoided study, period.

"You study together, how did that happen? If you don't mind me asking." Ginny smiled.

"It was on a Hogsmead weekend when I was in my second year, so Ron and Hermione were both in the village. He was sitting one table away, and I'd noticed that he seemed to be struggling over an essay, and it was History of Magic, which for some bizarre reason, I've always been good at.

"He was sat there for ten minutes or something, and I came across and offered to help, he looked at me weirdly and I must have turned bright red, and mumbled something about being good at History.

"The title of the essay was "Which of the following events was the greater factor in the revision of the statute of secrecy in 1512, a) the Catholic Church's increased hostility to witchcraft, or b) the goblin rebellion of 1498-1509?" I happened to know something about the subject, so I read the relevant chapters in the textbook, while he wrote more and more starts of sentences and scribbled them out. By the time I had finished reading ten minutes later, the parchment he was using was completely useless and he looked even more stressed.

"I asked him when it was due, and he revealed that it had been due the previous day, but he hadn't had time with Quidditch practise to do it, and if he didn't get it to Professor Binns within an hour and a half he would get detention. So I offered to dictate the essay to him. He stared at me as if I had two heads, before nodding, as though he hardly believed what had just happened. So I warned him to write big because I wasn't sure it would fill two rolls of parchment, so he did and I sketched out a quick plan, and started dictating.

"He got the essay in on time, and apparently Hermione was very suspicious because his two roll essay had gotten a higher score than her three and a half roll essay. Eventually he confessed to her and we all started studying together every so often. It was a bit bizarre."

"Well I never knew that." Sirius was slightly taken aback. On one level he could hardly believe that this innocent child was a Slytherin, on another, Regulus had been just like this too until peer pressure from his parents and friends had persuaded him to take the dark mark.

"So what's this about your family hating you? You seem happy enough now."

"Well it doesn't matter so much at Hogwarts, because all my friends are there, but at home Ron bullies me and treats me like I'm some sort of traitor. My parents don't seem to know how to react, and they try not to show it but they just seem a little colder with me, a little snappier, a little shorter than they do with everyone else. Fred and George don't really know how to react to me. Bill and Charlie and Percy are all ok though, if a little distant, we just don't talk much.

"It's not fair! The only thing that seems to matter to mum and dad is that I'm a Slytherin. They don't see that I've been top of my year every year except first, and that was only because exams were cancelled. They don't see that I'm probably the most powerful witch in my year. They don't see that Professor Sinistra and Professor McGonagall both think that I should take my Arithmancy and Transfiguration OWL's this year instead of next. They don't see that I've found something I'm good at in performing, and I'm confused as hell, because if I decide to become a Quidditch player I'm fine, but if I try to make it as an actress, I don't have a chance without GCSE's and A levels. They don't see me, they just see the colour of my school tie."

"You sound like a very impressive young witch, and I heard a rumour that even Snape likes you, and he's never liked a Weasley." Ginny snorted and buried her head in Sirius robes.

"What am I going to do?"

"Have you told your parents about your worries." He felt her shake her head. "Ok, do you think they might care and see you if you did?" Ginny shot up.

"I've tried, but they just brush me off."

"Calm down. I have an idea, it won't solve your troubles but it might distract you for a while." Ginny looked curious.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, our task is to clean this house isn't it?"

"Yes."

"While Molly seems to be attempting to commandeer this, not that I'm complaining, why don't we clean out a special room."

"A special room?" A confused smile appeared on her face.

"Well, I've given Remus stuff we found before we arrived that would work for him. Why don't we clear out the room where my cousin's always stayed. If your willing to overlook the fact that one went mad, one married a death eater, and one was outcast from the family, Bella Cissy and Andy did have some nice clothes when they were teenagers, and if it's still here they can't want it, besides some of it might suit you. And this way, you don't have to put up with your brothers."

Ginny smiled, an uncertain but hopeful smile. Sirius stood and opened the door of the bedroom for her; she stepped through, then followed him, up another staircase onto the fourth floor, to a room right at the end.

The room wasn't massive, but it felt smaller, with three beds in, a wardrobe and a dressing table. It was a beautiful dressing table, Ginny couldn't help sitting at it and looking at the perfume bottles, the silver backed hairbrush and hand mirror, the delicately woven crystal and silver trinkets which littered the top, as is likely to happen for any girls room.

Sirius stood at the doorway and smiled.

"I'll tell you what Ginny, why don't you have this room, it won't take more than a few hours to properly clean out, I've already checked it for dark objects. We'll get Tonks, whose coming over in half an hour to help out, and go through this room. I think it's only fair as it used to be her mothers."

"Tonks' mother is your cousin?"

"Yep, cousin Andy, my favourite. Course, she did get exiled for marrying a muggle, Ted."

"Ok" Ginny said. Then quiet suddenly an idea stuck her. "I've told you about my friends at Hogwarts, tell me about yours. What were Remus and Harry's dad like as teenagers?"

Sirius let an easy smile cross his features as he reminisced, almost forgetting himself. Ginny was very like Lily in one particular way, she was very easy to talk to. If James and Remus were his brothers, then Lily was his sister, and that was what this was like. Of course, in so many ways Ginny was very different to Lily, her personality seemed more effervescent, her mood more changeable. She was a sadder person, but she'd had a harder life. Yes, he may have only known the girl a day, but she was quickly becoming a good friend.

Like a kid sister without the side effects of winding him up. In fact, he saw her in almost the exact same way as he viewed his cousin Tonks. Today, Sirius thought, was one of the few times since Azkaban that he had truly felt alive.

AN- please review! I had this idea and I want to know if I should be following it up. I know there's a lot of setting up material. But I plan to follow through the summer and through to the end of fifth year, and possibly beyond that. I don't know whether or not Sirius should die, and whether or not you like the idea of Remus playing a part. Let me know what you think. I'd have Tonks, with possibly Hermione, and Harry joins Sirius and Ginny's little family thing. Harry and Hermione to a lesser extent. I will update about once a week


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